The priests in the Old Testament did three main things: they offered the sacrifices (in the outer court), they light the lamps (in the Holy Place), and they burn the incense (in the Holy of Holies).
Offering the sacrifices in the outer court was on the altar on behalf of the people; the people of Israel could not just offer the sacrifice themselves – they needed a priest to offer it for them. This service was rather rough or coarse since it involved the sacrifice of large animals.
Christ is the One who replaces all the sacrifices with Himself, and He offered Himself as the all-inclusive sacrifice for all mankind; we now simply need to take Him as our all-inclusive sacrifice and experience Him, offer Him to God, eat Him with God and before God, and help others experience Him in such a way.
The second thing the priests had to do was to light the lamps in the Holy Place, and they had to make sure the light was on all the time. The practical application of this in our Christian experience is not only to be enlightened by the Lord in His word but to be in the light and walk in the light (1 John 1:6), habitually having our being and our daily activities in the Lord’s shining light.
For this, we need to spend time with the Lord, setting aside an adequate amount of time to contact Him, enjoy Him, pray over His word, and let Him shine on us; then, throughout the day we need to come under His shining all the time and walk in the light. Specifically, today we want to see how the lighting of the lamps in the sanctuary of God signifies the proper way for us to meet as Christians.
The third thing that the priests had to do was to burn the incense on the altar in the Holy of Holies; burning the incense and lighting the lamp go together, showing us that every time we pray, we are enlightened, and whenever the Lord enlightens us and we walk in the light, we are led to pray. First, there is the light of the lamp, then there’s the offering of the incense with its particular smell.
Our daily walk and our meetings should give people the sense that there’s a certain smell and there’s much light. In the church meetings and in our personal life we should have the incense of prayer, that is, our personal life and our church life needs to be filled with prayer.
Spending Personal Time with the Lord Daily to Light the Lamps and Walk in the Light
One of the most important things in serving as a priest is to spend time with the Lord. We all know that we need to have a time with the Lord, but again and again as things press upon us and we need to do this and that, the first thing we tend to sacrifice is our time with the Lord. Without a personal, intimate, and sweet time with the Lord every day all the other things are teachings and doctrines to us.
We all need to ask ourselves this question, How much time do I spend daily with the Lord? The most prevailing need among Christians today is to spend a certain amount of time with the Lord every day; 5 or 10 minutes is not enough – we need to spend at least 30 minutes with the Lord every day to be strengthened and supplied by Him.
We may know how to search the Scriptures, study the Bible, and pray, but we need to practice spending time with the Lord to receive spiritual nourishment for Him. The priests are those who FIRST spend proper and adequate time in the Lord’s presence, and then they served God in doing many things. Our whole attention needs to be not on working for God or even on getting more Bible knowledge; we need to focus primarily on our personal time with the Lord, out of which everything comes out.
It is impossible for any Christian who spends less than 30 minutes in the Lord’s presence every day to be adequately healthy spiritually or to serve as priest. If we set aside a time with the Lord every day for a period of time, the Lord will do a great change in us, our experience of Christ will be deepened, our influence toward others will be prevailing, and the situation among us will be changed.
We must pay the price to spend time with the Lord for the sake of our spiritual growth in life and for our going on with the Lord. As we spend time with the Lord, He has a way to shine on us and bring our whole being in His light. As we spend time with the Lord, we light the lamp and the Lord exposes us, we confess our sins, and His blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:7-9).
As priests to God it is our duty to “light the lamp” in the Holy Place continually and perpetually, and we need to maintain this light shining (see Exo. 27:20-21). From morning to evening, all the time until the Lord’s second coming, we need to be in the light and maintain this position.
In our personal life we need to wait on the Lord, minister to Him, and be under His shining, and our daily life should be a continual walk in the light as God is in the light. It is a great need for us to wake up early in the morning and spend adequate time with the Lord to be infused with Him, shined on by Him, and have our whole being brought into His divine light.
Then, throughout the day we need to maintain the light shining, that is, we need to walk in the light and be in the light all the time habitually.
Lord Jesus, cause us to see our need to spend more time with You personally, intimately, and privately so that we may light the lamp and keep the light shining. Oh Lord, how much time do we spend with You daily? We give ourselves to You to spend time in Your presence to be infused with You and be shined on by You so that our whole being with our daily living and walk may be in the divine light. Lord, may we pay the price to spend time with You and walk in the light so that the lamps may be burning bright day and night!
Lighting the Lamps in the Sanctuary signifies the Proper Way to Meet as Christians
The lighting of the lamps in the sanctuary of God is a priestly service, a service of the priests (Exo. 27:20-21). In typology, lighting the lamps in the sanctuary of God signifies the proper way for us to meet as Christians. The tabernacle as the tent of meeting, the place where God met with His people and spoke to them (Lev. 1:1), typifies the meetings of the church.
Everything we do in the meetings of the church – whether praying, singing, praising, prophesying, testifying, etc – needs to be done in the principle of causing the light to shine. To light the lamps means to give off light; when we speak our mouth in the meeting, we need to speak a word that brings in light and shines forth Christ.
If our daily living and walk are in the light and if we spend adequate time in the Lord’s presence, then in the meeting we will continue to live in the light and shine the divine light. But it is possible to have a church meeting and do the right things yet have darkness instead of light. Whenever a group of believers come together, if no one is a holy priest lighting the lamp, that meeting is dark.
We are all of different ages and we’re at different stages in our spiritual growth, but whenever we come together we should all be priests. What is needed is that our meetings would be filled with light. We need to wear our priestly garments, that is, we must express Christ, and we will then light the lamp.
How much light there will be in the sanctuary depends on the extent to which we are qualified to light the lamps by wearing Christ as the priestly garments. In order to light the lamps, we must express Christ, and we must have the experience of the embodiment of God, the divine nature, the humanity of Jesus, and the Spirit of Christ with the elements of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. All these elements need to be the ingredients of our Christian life. If this is the case, then we are qualified to light the lamps in the sanctuary of God. (Witness Lee, Life-Study of Exodus)
May the Lord save us from repeating the pitiful history of Christianity today in the church life in the Lord’s recovery. We may have the highest truth and the best way to meet, but unless we are functioning as priests in the meeting, it is possible for the meeting to be in darkness.
Our daily living and our expressing Christ daily have much to do with lighting the lamp; if we don’t have the expression of Christ in our daily walk, it is hard for us to be an enlightening factor in the church meetings. We may work at a job, take care of children at home, study, or be busy throughout the day, but we need to live as priests by lighting the lamp and walking in the light daily.
Christians often debate what is the best way to meet, and there are many denominations based on the many ways of meeting. The proper way of meeting according to the Bible is by lighting the lamp.
How do we meet? It’s not in this place or that place, in this way or that way, but in the way of lighting the lamp in the Holy Place. No matter the number of people in our meeting, we need to cause the light to shine. Our singing, our testimony, our singing, our speaking, and our praying need to be imparting the divine light to others.
We need to be purified by the Lord’s shining light in his word and praise the Lord in a proper way with the pure olive oil of the Spirit. We should not mix our prophesying with joking or loose talk but allow the cross of Christ to operate in us to remove any foreign element. May the Lord save us from meeting in a natural or secular way, and may everything we do in our Christian meeting cause the holy light to ascend!
Lord Jesus, save us from meeting in a natural way without the divine light shining. May our meeting be in the principle of lighting the lamps and having the divine light shining. Lord, recover the proper way of meeting among us. May we be those who express Christ and experience Christ, live by the divine nature, express the humanity of Jesus, and enjoy the Spirit of Christ with all the elements of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection to be qualified to light the lamps in the church meetings, the sanctuary of God.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Andrew Yu’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 114-115 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Priesthood or God’s Building, week 4 / msg 4, Lighting the Lamps and Burning the Incense.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Begin the day with God, He needs His people to / Be those who love Him best! Get up with this in view. / Rise up! Don’t wait! You’ll miss the Son. / He needs some to watch and pray. / Spend time with Him and let Him in— / To your heart so He can have His way. (Song on Spending time with God)
# Walk in the light, and thou shalt know / That fellowship of love / His Spirit only can bestow, / Who reigns in light above. / Walk in the light, and thou shalt find / Thy heart made truly His; / Who dwells in cloudless light enshrined, / In whom no darkness is. (Hymns #658)
# By all the hymns and prayers we offer here, / Christ the reality we would express; / All the activities in fellowship – / Christ thus in operation manifest. / ‘Tis in His Name we meet, in Spirit act, / With nothing in our mind to formalize; / ’Tis by His pow’r we pray, in unction praise, / And with Himself in spirit exercise. (Hymns #863)
Whenever we come together to meet as the church, that meeting is in God’s dwelling place….Our gathering is a sanctuary. Therefore, we should not behave as if we were in a stadium. We need to remember that we are in a holy gathering of the saints. As those whose gathering is the sanctuary of God, we need to light the lamps in the sanctuary, that is, in the Tent of Meeting. Of course, the physical building in which we meet is not the sanctuary, or the Holy Place; it is the gathering which is the sanctuary. No matter where we may meet, in a building or in the open air, our gathering is the Holy Place. For this reason, we should not meet in a natural way or in a secular way. Everything we do in the meeting—our speaking, singing, praising, calling, shouting, pray-reading—must cause the holy light to ascend. This is to light the lamps in God’s sanctuary so that the light may swallow up the darkness. (Witness Lee, Life-Study of Exodus)
As we the body of Christ Jesus we should be a seeker of Christ spending time with the Lord in our mingled spirit exercising our mingled spirit while reading His word receiving Him as our life supply to be constituted and saturated with his divine life and this life is spirit of God within us we should walk according to this life and have intimate fellowship with this life and call always His name by using our spirit! To spend more time with Christ Jesus because He gives us strength to come before Him! My will is weak but He is our strength!